Oliver's Blog

Thanks to Helena and Dah-Rah for their supply of Mountain Dew that they discovered in a local shop near where they live. Mmmmmmm.

One for the medical community this is, PlayStation palmar hidradenitis has been identified as a varient of idiopathic palmar eccrine hidradenitis… or in normal language – manky skin on your hands from playing on a games console too much. No, I haven’t got this issue as I can’t normally ‘stay alive’ in a game long enough for this to become an issue. If you are affected by the issues in today’s blog entry, then you can call our special helpline on 0800-mankyhands. Or just read a bit more about it here

I had originally planned a blog post going something like this:

Reason #1: I haven’t got one.
Reason #2: To play Ratchett & Clank, Secret Agent Clank, and Resistance.
Reason #3: To link up to my PS3 for remote content purposes.
etc.. etc.. blah.. blah.

But, what’s this I hear on the rumour mill? A shiny new PSP-4000 may be on the horizon later this year. It’s all just speculation at the moment but it does throw a spanner in my theoritcal works. If it turns out to be anything like the concept design images doing the rounds then it could be worth hanging on – a possible right analog control and a funky sliding screen. Only a month to go until the Game Developer’s Conference when Sony might make an announcement, otherwise if the device is to launch this year their last public chance to boast about it will be at the E3 event in June…

This is a little annoyance of mine and it’s not to do with actual biometrics themselves but the way people use them. Biometrics, for those not in the know, is all to do with the science behind the identification of an individual such as fingerprinting, iris recognition etc.. Enterprising laptop manufacturers have recently over the last year or so started to introduce these little biometric tools as add-on components, HP with their fingerprint readers on business laptops, and Dell touting their facial recognition software which uses the built in web cam to make sure you look like the person you are supposed to be. So it was with great amusement that I read this story about facial recognition authentication being hacked with nothing more than a printed out photo. A failure in the technology you might think? Nope, stupid people putting it in the wrong place. Let me enlighten you on the subject of user authentication. If you make use of a computer system, such as the beloved Facebook, you type in a username and a password. This is known a two-fold (or two-factor) authentication.. you have a username (who are you?) and a password (what secret do you know?). Very secure in principle as long as the secret is kept a secret. Some online banks even give out a special smartcard and a card reader, so you end up with three-fold (three-factor) authentication: username (who are you?), password (what secret do you know) and smartcard (what have you got?). If you use a cash machine, the ‘who are you?’ and ‘what have you got?’ are combined in to one, your cashpoint card with account number written on it (note… whether this is know two or three factor is a point of debate!). How does this fit in with biometrics? Well which of those questions mentioned above can be answered by a biometric solution? In my opinion they most definitely answer the ‘who are you?’ question, and could be argued that they answer the ‘what have you got?’ question but I wouldn’t be confident in using biometrics there… So why are manufacturers using biometric authentication instead of a password???? Crazy stuff. The ‘what secret do you know?’ question is very important and to replace that with biometrics is mental, everyone knows what I look like so facial recognition is out of the question, and my fingerprints are also no secret unless I wear rubber gloves before I touch anything. OK, so iris recognition might be a little more complicated to steal but possible all the same, it’s not a secret, someone just has to scan your eye and they have all the data needed. Laptops secured with biometrics replacing a password are only slightly more secure than a laptop secured with just a username.. Now if they combined the facial recognition with a compulsory password I’d be happy.

I need a rest after this weekend.. I did enough work to last the rest of the year I think. It all started Friday evening when I painted the woodwork in the nursery. First thing Saturday morning I started on the walls, then the ceiling and finally a second coat on the woodwork. While I was splodging away upstairs, Vicky was in the process of cooking (with toddler assistance) a special Valentine’s day meal of Moroccan Chicken & Couscous with Lebanese herby flat breads (all home made I might add), followed by a dessert of chocolate cake and vanilla cream. As nice as the meal was, my highlight was the look on Poppy’s face after she’d shaken her beaker (containing very fizzy traditional lemonade) and taken a sip. Bubbles were pouring out of her mouth and both nostrils. After dinner I replaced the broken frost thermostat on the central heating and reassembled all the nursery furniture (yes, Helena, now you have some space to sleep in the guest room) and hung the curtains. Job done and a customary text to my mom to check in the completion time. Next job was to submit some Open Uni coursework (called a CMA… like a multiple choice quiz submitted online) due end of February and then start on the coursework for another course due in the middle of March. I forgot what the time was on that one and carried on quite late…

Sunday. Up we got (eventually, after a couple of hours of CBeebies) and walked to Margam Park. This took quite a while because Poppy likes to stop every 5 seconds to look at stones so for the main part of the walk we had to stick her in the push chair. But once in the park off she ran talking to all the animals in the pens along the way. She met some donkeys, Shetland ponies, cows, goats and Granny Pig and Grancher Pig. Finally we made it to our intended destination: “Margam Castle”. No, not the actual castle, but a play area named after the building casting a shadow over it. Sadly we forgot the camera, but you can imagine a large adventure play area built out of large logs with slides, high walkways, a rope swing and tunnels and bridges galore. Vicky sat down and dozed while me and Poppy legged it around for a bit. No tears at all until it was home time…. Once home we had leftovers from yesterday for lunch and I carried on with my coursework… and I even finished it. My reward: PlayStation time. I completed Resistance 2 on the PS3 last night. So proud.

Oh no.. I forgot to clean the fish out!